


Mother of Invention

by DragoJustine



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-12
Updated: 2008-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-18 00:26:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragoJustine/pseuds/DragoJustine





	Mother of Invention

Chuck finds a fancy-dress costume shop in town and takes to buying gloves. Old gloves, elbow length and elegant, with a whole row of fiddly little buttons. Soft calfskin, worn smooth and shiny and supple. She wears them everywhere now, giving Ned a whole expanse of slim wrist and slender forearm whenever he wants to take it. Giving herself the ability to put her hand on his shoulder when she rises from the table, touch his back as she passes. The gloves win her odd looks in public, but her entire manner of dress has always been old fashioned, those color-coordinated outfits with modest necklines and wide skirts, and she is one of those pretty girls who can wear anything she wants and have it blessed with a positive adjective -- spirited, or individualistic, or, in the case of her gilded-age gloves, "retro" -- because no one that pretty is stodgy. 

She inspects the gloves, looks for even the smallest snag or hole and goes back to the shop to return them for better ones, and so even though the cotton ones are old they have never seen moths; even though the calfskin is worn shiny it is never worn through. She takes to touching his bare skin, his cheek, lightly, sweetly, in public. Then she does it in private, late at night when the neon sign reads "Closed." She takes his shirt by the hem and draws it over his head and lets those gloved fingers run down. Neck, collarbone, chest, stomach, hipbone. She can hear his breath catch and feel every flicker of ticklish muscle beneath her fingertips. His eyes are wide and his hands are trembling and the matched stinks of terror and arousal pour off him in waves. She suddenly can see herself (feel herself, with a muscle memory like the very most acute deja vu) throwing herself at him, kissing him-- 

It's like that moment when you stand on top of a cliff and suddenly become _certain_ you will jump. 

She runs out of the dark Pie Hole, leaps in a cab, and tears off her archaic, anachronistic gloves. Tells the cabbie to take her to a club and dances, presses herself up against sweaty men who palm her ass and let their lips brush her ear when they talk. She doesn't answer them, doesn't accept their drinks, just grinds harder and shoves her ass back against their hands. She can't talk. If she opens her mouth, she will scream with rage, because she wants. Her whole life she was trapped, coddled, kept away, and now suddenly she is completely, frighteningly free, and she burns with frustrated want in a way the bee-keeping niece of the Darling Mermaid Darlings never did. 

She doesn't go back until the Pie Hole is open the next day and she can see Ned's tall silhouette in the kitchen. Then Chuck creeps up the back stairs to their apartment. It's not that she doesn't want to talk to him, though she doesn't. It's not because she doesn't want him asking where she was. He probably wouldn't. The boy has a jealous streak but he doesn't want to have a jealous streak so he will carefully avoid asking questions like that. 

Avoiding Ned has the unfortunate result of running her right into Olive.

"Where were you last night?"

"How do you know I was anywhere?" 

"Well then, why are you wearing the same clothes you were yesterday?"

"Do you think you might be paying a bit too much attention to my clothes?"

Stalemate. They both have the grace to look a little ashamed, as though they didn't mean to be quite so catty. Then Olive has to go and be the bigger person, damn her. (Maybe she has the right, an insane part of Chuck's brain observes. After all, she never gets to be the bigger person _literally._ )

"I'm sorry. It's just that Ned's been worried sick about you. He thought you were gone for good. I'll just go tell him you're back." And now there is nothing to do but throw herself on Olive's dubious mercy.

"Please, Olive. I just need some time alone. I need to take a nap. I promise I'll come down for lunch, okay? Just don't..." 

"You know, I've been keeping a lot of secrets recently, Miss Lonely Tourist." Chuck figures that is Olive's way of saying she will do it. Another tally has been made in the ledger of obligation. Chuck wishes she had something Olive wanted, to clear the debt.

She does not snap "welcome to my world," which counts as a win. 

***

Emerson has a case, something routine ruled a suicide by the police but the family is in denial on that front and offering a reward. He doesn't grumble when she smoothly insists on coming to the morgue with them tomorrow, and that probably means that Ned was indeed in a state over her disappearance. She keeps her glove on his arm the entire time, eating her Boisonberry-with-Ementhaler-crust awkwardly one-handed. Her shoes knock against his under the table, and that is all the apology she can manage with Emerson right there. 

When Ms. Hawkins, one of the lunchtime regulars, asks which pie she loves today, Olive snaps "Oh, just throw a dart!" 

Back in the kitchen, Chuck tucks her gloves into her belt and flours the counter. Ned is babbling, and she wonders how long she should let him go. Sometimes he seems to just feel better if he runs at the mouth for a bit, but sometimes it only gets him more worked up.

A good pie crust is delicate. Once you start touching it, to shape it and roll it out, the timer starts ticking down fast. The fundamental rule is to touch the pie crust as little as possible. Is that why he picked pies? She suspects it was something else. 

"--not like I wouldn't want that to happen again, because I would, but you know it won't, right? Because it's really important for you to be safe. Around me. From me, I guess, but that makes me sound like some kind of freaky axe-murderer, and I'm not, so let's say safe around me. It's really important for you to be safe around me. So that's never going to happen again, and I'm so sorry if you felt like you had to, because you don't. Because I don't want you running away again. I mean, it's not running away, really, because it's not like you're some teenager or a puppy or something, it's not like I'd call the police or put up little signs on telephone poles, but I want you to be able to stay. And people only run away when they don't feel safe--"

Obviously, that was long enough. "Ned, shut up."

Chuck would swear she heard his teeth click together. "We're going to make pies. And then, after the store is closed, we're going to talk. Not before then." 

He takes her at her word, starts awkwardly trying to apologize again the minute Olive flips the sign to Closed. She maintains radio silence until they are in the bedroom. 

"Ned, sit down."

He does, promptly, on the edge of his bed.

She toes off her shoes, lays her gloves carefully on the nightstand. Then she unbuttons her dress. He starts babbling again right on cue, something about how he can turn the thermostat down if she's hot, and he's halfway up looking determinedly anywhere but her. 

"I said sit. Sit and look at me."

So he does, pigeon-toed with his hands between his knees and a blush creeping over his cheeks and right down his neck. 

She slips the dress off and hangs it up, giving him the few seconds while she faces away. Then she turns back, discards her bra, and settles carefully onto her own bed. She cups one breast in her left hand and teases her nipple hard, trailing her other hand down over her belly and between her legs.

It isn't really good, not yet, but she's been nursing this well over 24 hours straight, and for days before that. It's more of a relief than a pleasure. 

"I want you," she says. "I want to have sex with you, and if no touching is the rule, that's fine. There are lots of other things we can do."

When she eases her underwear off she's already slick and open. The smell hits the enclosed room as she lets her legs fall open, and she can see it hit Ned too, the way his nostrils flare and his body jerks physically. 

From where he's sitting, he can't actually see. Just see her hand moving there. He looks nearly incapacitated by heat and embarrassment, eyes wide as saucers, spine curved over his lap a little like it's physically paining him.

"It will be safe, because we'll be careful. I can handle a little risk, but I absolutely cannot handle having nothing but cutesy G-rated fake kisses for one more single day." Her voice has gone breathy. She forces herself to keep to long, smooth strokes of two fingers, just until she's said everything that needs saying. "I like you watching me, so that's a great place to start. I guess you need some time to get used to it, but next time, I want to see you come. This is about both of us." 

When she says she wants to see him come, his body jerks again. He presses one hand down over his crotch hard and whimpers. That does it, that just completely does it, and she gives in. Rough and quick, little jerky, jiggling rubs over her clit, final hard pressure as everything contracts. She feels the way her face contorts and can hear her own hitching, gasping breaths. If only she wasn’t making so much noise, so she could hear his own desperate, strangled noises. She rides it for a long time, pressing enough to draw out another weak spasm every time she thinks she's finished, until she's completely limp and sinking heavily into her mattress.

The bathroom door closes too hard, and she can hear Ned's frantic finish only seconds later.

When he comes out he's still beet-red, and it's still as much embarrassment as lust. But he came back at all, after it was so very obvious what he was doing, and that probably means she can bring him along in this. 

"Don't move," he says, quickly, like he has to get it out fast before he can stammer or stutter. She nods, and he reaches down carefully -- oh, so carefully -- to take hold of the blanket folded at her feet and draw it up over her. She smiles at him with the very last of her waking mind, and drifts off.


End file.
